Of the Street-Sellers of Japanned Table-Covers.
This trade, like several others, as soon as the new commodities became in established demand, and sufficiently cheap, was adopted by street-sellers. It has been a regular street-trade between four and five years. Previously, when the covers were dearer, the street-sellers were afraid to speculate much in them; but one man told me that he once sold a table-cover for 8s., and at another time for 10s.
The goods are supplied to the street-folk principally by three manufacturers—in Long-lane, Smithfield, Whitechapel-road, and Petticoat-lane. The venders of the glazed table-covers are generally considered among the smartest of the street-folk, as they do not sell to the poor, or in poor neighbourhoods, but “at the better sort of houses, and to the wealthier sort of people.” Table-covers are now frequently disposed of by raffle. “I very seldom sell in the streets,” said one man, “though I one evening cleared 4s. by standing near the Vinegar-works, in the City-road, and selling to gents on their way home from the city. The public-house trade is the best, and indeed in winter evenings, and after dark generally, there’s no other. I get rid of more by raffling than by sale. On Saturday evening I had raffles for two covers, which cost me 1s. 4d. each. I had some trouble to get 1s. 9d. for one; but I got up a raffle for the other, and it brought me 2s.; six members at 4d. each. It’s just the sort of thing to get off in a raffle on Saturday night, or any time when mechanics have money. A man thinks—leastways I’ve thought so myself, when I’ve been in a public-house raffle—now I’ve spent more money than I ought to, and there’s the old woman to face; but if I win the raffle, and take the thing home, why my money has gone to buy a nice thing, and not for drink.” I may remark that in nearly all raffles got up in this manner, the article raffled for is generally something coveted by a working man, but not so indispensably necessary to him, that he feels justified in expending his money upon it. This fact seems well enough known to the street-sellers who frequent public-houses with their wares. I inquired of the informant in question if he had ever tried to get up a raffle of his table-covers in a coffee-shop as well as a public-house. “Never, with table-covers,” he said, “but I have with other things, and find it’s no go. In a coffee-shop people are quiet, and reading, unless it’s one of them low places for young thieves, and such like; and they’ve no money very likely, and I wouldn’t like to trust them in a raffle if they had. In public-houses there’s talk and fun, and people’s more inclined for a raffle, or anything spicy that offers.”
There are now fifteen regular street-sellers, or street-hawkers of these table-covers, in London, four of whom are the men’s wives, and they not unfrequently go a round together. Sometimes, on fine days, there are twenty. I heard of one woman who had been very successful in bartering table-covers for old clothes. “I’ve done a little that way myself,” said a man in the trade, “but nothing to her, and people sees into things so now, that there’s hardly a chance for a crust. The covers is so soft and shiny, and there’s such fine parrots and birds of paradise on them, that before the price was known there was a chance of a good bargain. I once got for a cover that cost me 2s. 9d. a great coat that a Jew, after a hard bargaining, gave me 6s. 3d. for.”
The prices of the table-covers (wholesale) run from 8s. a dozen to 30s.; but the street-sellers rarely go to a higher price than 18s. They can buy a dozen, or half a dozen—or even a smaller quantity—of different sizes. Some of these street-traders sell, with the table-covers, a few wash-leathers, of the better kind. Calculating that fifteen street-sellers each take 25s. weekly the year round—one-half being the profit, including their advantages in bartering and raffling—we find 975l. expended yearly upon japanned table-covers, bought in the streets.